Miniaturization of biological assays using microarray technology is essential for development of high-throughput screening (HTS). However, critical obstacles still remain before HTS is fully realized as a powerful and cost-effective research tool that is useful for developing fields such as pharmacogenetics. One of these obstacles is the rate at which nucleic acids hybridize with molecules in a microarray.
Enhancement of nucleic acid hybridization rates can help make HTS more valuable as a research tool by reducing time and resource requirements and increasing productivity. Currently, conventional hybridization times range from a few hours (e.g., in the case of single nucleotide polymorphism analysis) to overnight (12-18 hours; e.g., in the case of gene expression arrays). Thus, hybridization times for expression profiling microarrays are virtually the same as those required for Southern and Northern blot analysis and for nylon membrane-based macroarrays. There is a need for improved hybridization rates in order to expedite HTS methods and for other purposes. The present invention satisfies this need by providing nucleic acid hybridization rate enhancement (HRE) methods.